Term of the Day

The Sinclair ZX Spectrum was a considerably popular personal computer during the 1980s. Developed in Britain, it is often credited for popularizing use of the personal computer in Europe. It featured a screen resolution of 256 by 192 colored pixels (unprecedented at the time for a household computer). It was also known for its multifunction rubber...
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Java Database Connectivity Architecture (JDBC Architecture)

Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) architecture is an API specifying interfaces for accessing relational databases. JDBC helps to connect to a database, send queries and updates to the database, and retrieve and process the results obtained from the database for queries.

JDBC is a core part of the Java platform and is an API specification developed by Sun Microsystems. The JDBC architecture supports two-tier and three-tier processing models for accessing a database.

In the two-tier model, a Java applet or application communicates directly to the data source. The JDBC driver enables communication between the application and the data source. When a user sends a query to the data source, the answers for those queries are sent back to the user in the form of results. The data source may not always be a single machine located at a single place. It can be located on a different machine on a network to which a user is connected. This is known as a client/server configuration, where the user’s machine acts as a client and the machine having the data source running acts as the server. The network connection can be intranet or Internet.

In the three-tier model, the user’s commands or queries are sent to middle-tier services, from which the commands are again sent to the data source. The results are sent back to the middle tier, and from there to the user. This type of model is found very useful by management information system directors, as it makes it simple to maintain access control and make updates to corporate data. Application deployment also becomes easy and provides performance benefits. The middle tier is usually written in C or C++.

The JDBC driver manager is a traditional backbone of the JDBC architecture, which specifies objects for connecting Java applications to a JDBC driver. The JDBC Test Suite helps to ensure that the JDBC drivers will run the program. The JDBC-ODBC Bridge software offers JDBC access via the open database connectivity drivers.